


six

by watfordbird33



Series: that was the future; this is the past [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, M/M, Playing EXTREMELY fast and loose with canon, What is this thing previously called canon and now called MINE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 10:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10694940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: He falls six times.Companion to "all the different ways that we collide". Please read that first.





	six

He falls six times.

 

The first is when he meets the man he’ll know as Reg, standing by the freighter with his smile all bold and his hair combed forwards, a fucking mess, a smile, a mess, a smile, an escape. And dark eyes like falling, too. Bodhi grips his pockets from the inside and puts his fingers in the little holes he’s torn and looks down and his fingertips glint at him. Saying,  _ a fucking mess, a smile, a mess, a smile, an escape. _

“You’re my copilot?” he says, very softly.

Hasn’t learn to speak up yet. Hasn’t learned to walk that line, dawn darkness, love hate, always such a small expanse. Funny how the world has so much room but then there’s never any room to fuck up. Always black and white and the gray’s only half an inch wide.

The man looks at him with his dark, dark eyes.

“Your copilot?” he says, after a moment, smile warm. “They told me you were mine.”

A beat for confusion to niggle its way into Bodhi, tear at his long hair and his goggles and the anxious high-boned structure of his face, and then the dark-eyed man is laughing, laughing, smile warm, leaning forwards like his hair and folding Bodhi up in this hug: man to man, pilot to pilot. He puts his lips against the shell of Bodhi’s ear and whispers, “I was joking, cousin; just a little joke,” and then he pulls back like it never happened. Like the gray’s back to half an inch wide.

And, well.

Bodhi falls.

 

The second is their first flight. Physical falling, this time. Freighter plunging. Bodhi’s in the latrine because he told Reg he trusted him, told him his bladder was going to fucking  _ explode,  _ told him to  _ keep his fucking hands on the controls. _

Against the wall of the latrine--it’s small enough so that he has to lean like that, his ass freezing off on the tiled wall--and the whole freighter lurches. Just this downward motion like an arrow you’d scratch with chalk, like wires tangled up. Bodhi screams and the terror’s so sudden he stops pissing. It just dams the flow right up.

He buttons himself up, lunges for the door, flushes as an afterthought, and by the time he’s in the aisle, reaching for the cockpit door, the freighter’s steadied itself out.  _ Ornery Girl,  _ Bodhi thinks half-delirious, maybe that’s all it is, just her little quirks again, but then he gets himself into the cockpit and it’s Reg laughing his fucking head off, bending at the waist with his hands a mile off the controls. 

“Fucking autopilot,” he says, through tears and unshaven beard, looking up at Bodhi and his upside-down dark eyes. “Forgot to turn it on.”

 

Society blurs, with Reg. Black and white becomes solid gray, and then it’s all right to do anything. To hug, to laugh, to press lips against ears and lips against cheeks and contact means nothing when you’re far away from touching ground.

So the third is when they’re in two rented fresher stalls, side by side. Some Imperial-occupied moon, somewhere, unimportant except for the cleansings they get: ten minutes long, no longer. Side by side.

Bodhi can’t even place the moment when it stops being side by side and starts being  _ one. _

But contact means nothing, he remembers, even when Reg has him up against the fresher wall and it’s so entirely clearly wonderfully painfully not  _ fucking,  _ it’s  _ making love.  _ Contact means nothing. Even the kind of contact that’s words against skin, i love you, i love you, NO, fuck you, Reg, it’s too early for that, we’re both just starved for it, contact, physicality, can’t you see that people don’t just fall in love like this?

He can’t remember if he says it out loud, or if he just tips his head back and closes his eyes and lets the contact come: Reg’s hands in places that feel like sin. Underwater, unimportant. Doesn’t matter anymore when you’re miles and miles and light-years from home. 

 

The fourth comes when they haven’t talked in weeks. They’re on leave while the Empire sorts out its occupation on the same moon they rented fresher stalls in. And to be honest, it isn’t just the leave they haven’t talked during. To be honest, they haven’t talked since the i love yous and the pressing up against the fresher wall.

Because that was when contact began to mean something, and they realized it. That was when they went past all the lies and it was just dark eyes, dark eyes, long fingers and Reg’s voice and  _ cousin,  _ lips and hands. 

Now Reg’s on Bodhi’s doorstep and they’re silent. Staring at each other silence. Gray turned into black and white.

“Put your goggles down, Bodhi,” Reg says, so hesitant, and he says it like  _ Boo-dee:  _ that soft accent, a caress, a pledge. “What use are they doing up there on your forehead?”

Bodhi takes his goggles off. He hands them to Reg and their fingers touch but it’s an accident.  _ Just a little joke. _

“You’re full of shit,” he tells Reg.

“Like Ornery Girl.”

Bodhi smiles. The smallest curve. He can feel it on his lips. “Fucking  _ spewing _ it.” 

“Piles and piles of it in Imperial backyards.”

And then Bodhi can’t take it anymore and so he knocks the goggles out of Reg’s hands and grabs his waist and pulls them flush and kisses him until he can’t breathe, kisses him until he can’t taste anything but  _ Reg.  _

Just: this infinity, this immortalism. Indestructible.

Reg says, “Who are you to know how people fall in love?”

 

The fifth is a punch to the gut. 

Or maybe a knife. The fifth is what hurts the most. It’s agony in every language, a solid scream. Falling the farthest he’s ever gone.

Don’t fucking leave me.

Don’t fucking close your eyes and leave me here alone.

They think Galen Erso is the reason he deserts.

 

It’s two months later when he falls for the sixth time. 

First, he falls in love. 

Then, he falls apart.

_ Who are you to know how people fall in love? _

Bodhi closes his eyes and the com is aching: static pulse and Cassian breath. He thinks about the fresher and the weight of Reg’s body. That sharp heavy pain of him, there and gone. Dark eyes and unshaven beard. Looking upside down. Underwater. Unimportant.  _ Here. _

Cassian screaming, static pulse. Reg laughing, doubled over. Cassian. Reg. Cassian. And the freighter, plunging. The ways he fell. This is the sixth: the last, the first. He'll fall no further. He'll fall no more.

I’m the pilot, he thinks, the one thing he knows, _but maybe I never was._ Maybe I was the copilot all along, goddammit. Cousin, Reg, oh love, my love. (Who are you to know how people fall in love?) He presses his lips to the com and he screams Reg Reg he screams Cassian Cassian he screams in silence it’s falling apart and this is a kiss if you’ll catch it, this is a memory, this is a dream. This is what I meant to say. You’re beautiful. Oh, Reg, Cass, Reg, Cass, a smile, a mess, a smile, a mess. Your fucking dark eyes; your beautiful. And everything we  ~~ n ~~ ever had.

**Author's Note:**

> If you care, the "your beautiful" thrown in there is purposeful: as in, Cassian possesses beauty. Not a grammatical mistake, because I'm setting down my pencil and closing my computer the day I mix up "your" with "you're".


End file.
